Man of Her Dreams (13 page)

Damn, it felt good to have her there. She cuddled against him, one arm banded across his chest, her legs tangled with his, her soft round cheek pressed to the hollow of his shoulder. He stroked a hand over her tangle of dark copper hair. It wasn't going to be any hardship getting used to holding her this way.

A strange warmth wandered around inside his chest at the thought of waking up every day with Maggie snuggling up to him. To avoid thinking about it, he turned his attention to a new topic.

How long should he wait before he proposed to her again? It seemed their compatibility should be fairly obvious to Maggie after the night they'd just spent. Holy cow, he'd never known it was possible for two people to be
that
compatible. Aside from their delightful discovery, she was beginning to show an interest in the farm. The party they had attended had given her a glimpse of the glamorous side of the show-jumping world. The gossip floating around the ballroom had certainly given her an idea of the financial position he would be in once the syndication of Rough Cut was complete. She should be convinced by now that marrying him would be mutually beneficial.

Maybe he would propose to her today. He imagined the perfect scenario: Rough Cut would win the Albemarle Cup; Ry would invite Maggie to join him at the awards presentation, and after he'd accepted the trophy and prize money check, he would propose to her. The scene brought a smile to his lips. He'd have his prize stallion on one side and his bride-to-be on the other. Life didn't get much better than that.

Maggie stirred in her sleep, rubbing her head against him like a kitten. As he tugged the covers up around her shoulders, an incredible wave of tenderness swept over him. Had he been standing, Ry was certain it would have knocked him flat on his back. The element of surprise was outweighed only by the rising sense of panic that seemed to grab him by the throat. He fought it off. Why should he feel panicky? Everything was going exactly according to his plan.

Then Maggie stretched and raised her head. She pushed her hair out of her eyes and gave him a smile that would have warmed the coldest heart. Her sable eyes sparkled at him with remembrance of the night before and glowed with something he didn't attempt to identify. She reached up to touch his whisker-rough cheek and turned his whole world upside down with three little words.

“I love you.”

SEVEN

M
AGGIE COULDN'T HAVE
said exactly what she had expected Ry's reaction to be. He might have given her a warm smile. He might have blushed and scowled at her, then dragged her up and kissed her. Both fantasies had floated through her dreams. Both had ended with him making love to her. Neither had included the look he was giving her now—surprised, guarded, regretful.

It was the regret that hurt most, Maggie decided, pushing herself up in bed, holding the sheet up to cover herself as she did so. Surprise was a natural reaction to hearing those words from someone for the first time. And she had expected a certain amount of caution from him. His past relationships had made him wary. But regret…oh, man, that hurt, because there was no comforting explanation for it. Regret was regret, and though her mind scrambled frantically, nothing she could think of could soften the blow.

Ry didn't want her love.

“Well,” she said, a knot of tears lodged in the middle of her throat like a walnut in the shell. She fussed with the bed covers, gathering the material by the fistful and pulling it up around her. Her gaze dodged away from Ry's. “It seems I said the wrong thing, didn't I?”

Ry pushed himself up and leaned back against the headboard, the sheet pooling below his waist. He looked tough and tousled with his dark hair mussed around his head and the shadow of his beard graying the hard angular planes of his cheeks. “Maggie, don't confuse great sex with love.”

Anger washed her face a vibrant shade of red. She glared at him, open-mouthed. After all these years, she'd finally told him she loved him, and he had to come up with a line like that! “I'm not confused,” she said, her voice shaking with rage, “but apparently you are.”

She stepped off the bed, dragging the covers with her as she went in search of her clothes, leaving Rylan on the bed, buck naked.

“Maggie, what are you doing?” he demanded, climbing out of bed to follow her around the room. In a concession to modesty, he snatched his white cotton briefs off the back of a chair and held them in front of himself.

“I'm
hic
going home.” She picked up her garter belt and a lone stocking, wadded them into a ball, and stuffed them into one of her shoes. Glancing back at Rylan, she frowned at his attempt to cover himself. “Sugar, isn't that a little
hic
like trying a hide a baseball bat with a postage stamp?”

Ry scowled. He stepped into his shorts as Maggie returned to her search. “Maggie, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings.”

“Didn't you?” She gave a half laugh as she reached partway under the bed for her panties. “Well, that's a shame, darlin', because you scored a bull's-eye.”

Knowledge that he'd hurt her was like a knife in Ry's chest. He had only wanted to set her straight to help her avoid getting hurt in the future. They had spent a fantastic night together; she was in love with the way he'd made her feel. She wasn't in love with him.

As if in answer to his thoughts, she wheeled on him, shaking a shoe in his face. “I'm a grown
hic
woman, Rylan Quaid. I know the difference between love and multiple orgasms. I know I'm in
hic
love with you. If you can't handle that, it's just too damn bad, but don't you dare throw it back in my face!”

She started for the door, intending to go down the hall to the bathroom to dress, but Ry stepped on the bedclothes trailing behind her, then caught her by the shoulders and pulled her back against him.

“All right, all right,” he said impatiently. “I'm sorry.”

If she wanted to think she was in love with him, who was he to stop her? As she'd said, she was a grown woman, responsible for her own actions, for her own feelings. His responsibility was to himself, to keep his own head clear, to keep things in their proper perspective. He knew better than to believe in the love she thought she felt; it was just a passing thing.

Maggie struggled against his hold a bit, fighting his superior strength in vain. Ry wrapped his arms around her, pulling her back against his chest. There were times when he enjoyed having her hiss and spit at him like an angry cat. But now he felt a strong need to hold her and soothe the hurt he'd caused. It was a need he didn't examine too closely.

“Sometimes you make me so doggone mad, Rylan.” Her temper had kept her tears at bay. His sudden tenderness was loosening her tight hold on control, making her mouth tremble and eyes fill up and overflow.

“I know. I'm a bastard,” he said softly. He pressed a whisper-soft kiss in her tangled hair then nuzzled through the dark burnished mass to brush another on her neck. “I'm just a big, rough farmer. Wouldn't know charm if it spit in my face.”

Maggie sniffled and scrubbed at a tear with the heel of her hand, a watery chuckle escaping her. “That's a fact.” Twisting around, she pressed her cheek to his chest as the tears began coming in earnest. Hugging him for all she was worth, she said, “But I love you anyway.”

“Shhh…shhh…” Ry held her tight, rocking her back and forth, drinking in the feel of her sweet soft curves in his arms. A hint of her perfume still teased his nostrils. She was very feminine, and she seemed as fragile as a flower crying in his arms. Like a knife through silk, the sound tore through him all the way to his soul. He held her tighter. “Hush, baby, please don't cry.”

“I-I-I love you, and y-you don't believe me.”

That wasn't the stuff her dreams had been made of. In her dreams Ry had always returned her declaration of love with one of his own. His silence now squeezed around her heart like a fist, but she took hope in the comfort he offered. When his palms pressed against her cheeks, she raised her head and accepted the kisses he feathered across her face to take her tears away. When he pressed his lips to hers, she accepted that kiss too.

She loved him. It seemed she'd always loved him. So what choice did she have but to try to make him believe in that love? She put everything she was feeling into her kiss, refusing to stop even when he lifted her in his arms and the bedclothes she had wrapped around her fell away. She offered herself to him freely, without reservation, with all the love that ached in her heart. She stroked her love along the sleek, hard lines of his back, wrapped it around his hips, gloved the essence of his maleness with it. And when they reached passion's summit, she whispered it to him from the very depths of her being.

         

“Marry me, Maggie.”

Her lips lifted in a tired smile as she zipped her dress. “I guess that's an improvement over your last proposal.”

“Good enough for an admiral's daughter?” Dressed in jeans and a white western shirt, Ry stood by his dresser fiddling with the articles that sat on top, watching Maggie in the mirror. He didn't pursue the topic when she chose to ignore the question. It hardly seemed relevant anymore. If she thought she was in love with him, she probably thought he was good enough for her. In any case, the promise of the money and notoriety Rough Cut was bringing home was enough to make up for his own rough edges. “We make a good team.”

“Like Siskel and Ebert? Abbott and Costello? Pork rinds and beer?” she joked, trying to keep an eye on him as she bent to force her foot into her shoe.

Ry didn't laugh. “I mean it. I'm sick of playing these little games.”

“Okay.” She straightened and smoothed her skirt, nerves dancing in her stomach. “No more games then. Do you love me, Ry?”

He stiffened, avoiding his own reflection in the mirror. Did he love her? No. He was attracted to her, liked her, and respected her…. Christian Atherton's words of the night before came hauntingly to mind:
All those things add up to love.

Only if you're fool enough to let them, a bitter little voice murmured inside him. He'd seen his father do it, he'd nearly done it himself once, and once was enough. He wanted Maggie, but he was going to be honest about it with her. He wouldn't be a fool for love again. He couldn't be. He just didn't have it in him.

He turned to face her and heaved a sigh, his big shoulders sagging. “It's just a word, Maggie.”

“Not in my book it isn't.”

“We've got so much going for us. Don't screw it up waiting for some abstract concept to make bells ring in your head.” Determined to sway her to his way of thinking, he started ticking off his points on his fingers. “We're attracted to each other. We like each other—most of the time—”

She sliced her hand through the air to cut him off. “If you're going to read me that damn list again, I swear I'll choke you. We're people, Rylan, human beings, not critters with pedigrees to be matched up and bred in hopes of a nice foal crop.”

“I do not think of you as a brood mare,” he said, dropping his hands to his slim hips. “I think we could have a good life together, and I'm sick of waiting to get started on it. Marry me.”

She could have pointed out that he was being arrogant and dictatorial, but that would have been a waste of breath. He had no doubt been born arrogant and dictatorial. He had probably bossed around the nurses in the delivery room at his birth. And the truth of the matter was, she liked him that way. Once they were married, it was going to be one contest of wills after another, which suited her fine. There was just one little thing she wanted, one thing she had to have cleared up first.

She stepped closer to him, looked up into the fierce expression she loved so much, and wished that for once things would go according to her dreams. “Do you love me?”

“Aw, Maggie.” All the fight drained out of him on his sigh. The regret was there in his eyes again as he lifted a hand and stroked her cheek. “Don't ask me for something I'm not capable of. If there ever was a part of me that could feel that way, it died a long time ago. I'll give you everything else you ever wanted, honey.”

“But not your love.”

“You can't go to the well if the darn thing is dry.”

If she had believed that were true, that he simply wasn't capable of giving love, Maggie could have walked away from him feeling nothing more than pity. But it wasn't true, and she knew it. Ry had love in him. She'd seen him give it to his sister, to his horses, to the strays he took in. He gave it to her in his own stubborn way. He undoubtedly called it something else, but it was love.

She had lain awake half the night thinking it over, and she was convinced Ry was in love with her. He exhibited every known symptom. He admitted to each individual one. And no man would display as much jealousy as he did if there weren't deeper feelings involved. As far as she was concerned, the question now wasn't whether or not he was capable of loving, but whether or not he could let go of his fears and admit his love to her and to himself.

“Maggie, you know I care about you, you know I want you. We could have a good life together. Can't we leave it at that?”

Leave it at that? When she had loved him forever and had dreamed of nothing but his loving her in return? No, she couldn't leave it at that. She wouldn't settle for that when she knew in her heart of hearts they could have it all. They deserved better than to leave it at wanting and caring. And, because she loved him so, she felt she owed it to him to show him he could love and be loved and not get his heart broken in the process.

“Oh, Rylan,” she said on a sigh. Shaking her head wearily, she slid her arms around him and hugged him. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Marry me.” He scowled at her as if he thought he could get her to say yes by sheer force of will.

She raised up on tiptoe to kiss his nose. Her smile was as soft as satin. “I love you.” She stepped back and ran a hand over her skirt. “I'd better get on home so I can change clothes. Silk and sequins are probably overdressing for a horse show.”

When she was halfway to the door, he said, “You didn't answer me, Mary Margaret.”

The look she gave him was tender but run through with threads of firm resolve. “You'll get the answer you want, Ry, when I get the one I need to hear.”

Without another word she went downstairs and out the front door onto the wide porch, stopping at the view that greeted her. The sun had just cleared the eastern horizon, and the mists had yet to burn off the lower-lying land. A sense of peace and stillness embraced the farm. The weekend help had yet to arrive to start morning chores, so the only sounds drifting up from the stables were occasional low whinnies.

Tears stung her eyes. Oh, how she loved him, and how badly he needed that love.

This farm was where she wanted to spend the rest of her life. This was where she wanted to raise her children—Ry's children. She could easily picture herself coming out onto this porch in the morning with a cup of coffee, absorbing the solitude as she sat and rocked in the old bentwood rocker—the rocker they had made love on, she recalled with heat in her cheeks. She could see their children playing on the lawn—a pair of sturdy little boys and their red-haired baby sister. She could imagine standing there in the evening, watching Ry walk up from the stables in his dusty jeans and battered boots.

They could have that together—a home, a family, the kind of security based on a solid foundation of love. They would have it. She would see to it.

Shivering in the chilly fall air, Maggie crossed the yard to the main barn. She ignored the dogs that came looking for attention and pulled one of Ry's work jackets off a peg on the wall. It swallowed her up, the sleeves falling beyond her fingertips and the hem nearly to her knees. She welcomed the warmth of the soft flannel lining as well as the scent of horses and hay and Rylan. She didn't even mind the faintly lingering aroma of that awful liniment.

For someone who had just been told she could never have the only thing she'd ever wanted—Ry's love—she was in an amazingly good mood, Maggie mused. Perhaps that was because, in spite of everything, she was more convinced than ever that she would indeed have what she had dreamed of. It was going to take some work, and it wasn't going to be easy, but then nothing worth having ever was. Besides, she had never been one to shrink from a challenge. She wasn't an admiral's daughter for nothing.